Redesign inexpensive pillows by sewing them together, embellishing them with fringe or tassels or adding patterns to them with fabric paint. Design expert Deborah Durham demonstrates these quick and easy ideas for home accessorizing. Personalize plain chintz pillows by drawing or writing on them with fabric markers. This easy project is simple enough for kids. Include pillow painting as a party activity, and let the kids take their creations home as party favors. Use fabric paint to stencil patterns on plain pillows. Any sort of grid or pattern may be used as a stencil. Cut a piece of kitchen sponge into a small square, and use it to apply fabric paint to a pillow, using a paper doily as a stencil (figure A). Try metallic paint for a pretty gold-leaf effect. Don't worry about mistakes. With this type of all-over pattern perfection isn't necessary: any extra dots of paint become part of the pattern. Make a pillow into a flapped chair cushion by tucking it into a pair of large cloth napkins stitched together at the corners (figure B). Join the napkins by stitching them together, wrong sides facing, across three corners. The middle corner will become the front flap of the cushion. Leave the sides and one corner unstitched. Slip the pillow into the open end of the stitched cover, fitting the front corners of the pillow through the unstitched sides between the flaps of the cushion cover. Tie the cushion to the chair back with a length of matching ribbon. Mix pillows of varying colors and shapes, or embellish a plain pillow with tassels or fringe to make it special. If a favorite small pillow doesn't come in the size you'd like, hand-stitch several small pillows together with heavy-duty thread to create one big pillow.
RESOURCES :
Joy Rich
Pier 1 Imports
Website: www.pier1.com
| 
)
)
)
)
